In a massive effort to catalog the molecular causes of stomach cancer, scientists, including researchers from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, have identified four subtypes of tumors based on shared mutations and other molecular abnormalities.

Dana-Farber scientists identify a protein that is a cause of cachexia, a severe wasting of fat and muscle in half of all cancer patients, and show that blocking the protein in mice can prevent or halt the debilitating condition.

Dana-Farber and colleagues from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) Research Network identified novel mutations in a well-known cancer-causing pathway in lung adenocarcinoma, potentially identifying a greater number of patients with treatable mutations because many potent cancer drugs that target these mutations already exist. Additionally, these findings may expand the number of possible new therapeutic targets for this disease.

Research led by Bruce Spiegelman, PhD, and colleagues shows that adipsin, a cell signaling protein made by fat cells, plays a critical, previously unsuspected role in stimulating insulin secretion to control blood sugar, and the discovery could have implications for treatment of type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at Dana-Farber and Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH) have utilized nanomedicine technologies to develop a drug-delivery system that can precisely target and attack cancer cells in the bone, as well as increase bone strength and volume to prevent bone cancer progression.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and its Belfer Institute for Applied Cancer Science are collaborating with Johnson & Johnson Innovation, Boston and Janssen Biotech, Inc., to identify which lung cancer patients would benefit from a new generation of immunotherapies and which combination of such therapies will be the most effective.

Scientists have redoubled efforts to disable the mutated cancer gene KRAS, which confers an especially poor prognosis and has proved extraordinarily difficult to target. New research has identified an additional hurdle: inhibiting KRAS can activate a backup pathway in cancer cells that enables them to survive and thrive in the oncogene's absence.

Dana-Farber scientists report on a natural hormone that is increased by physical exercise and by exposure to cold improves blood sugar control, suppresses inflammation, and burns fat to mold leaner bodies in mice can be made in the laboratory and could have therapeutic potential for several diseases.